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Big but affordable effort needed for America to reach net-zero emissions by 2050, Princeton study shows
Massive new study by Princeton on what it will take to get to Net Zero by 2050. Highly recommended.
Bonus: one of the primary authors of this study is Jesse Jenkins - an early contributor to this site.
Some highlights:
The new research, which involved ten Princeton researchers and eight external collaborators, lays out five pathways by which the United States could decarbonize the entire economy in the next 30 years.
The scenarios that the new research details include a “high electrification” or E+ scenario, which involves aggressively electrifying buildings and transportation, so that 100% of cars are electric by 2050. The “less high electrification” or E- scenario, electrifies at a slower rate and uses more liquid and gaseous fuels for longer. Another scenario, noted as E- B+, allows much more biomass to be used in the energy system, which, unlike the other four scenarios, would require converting some land currently used for food agriculture to grow energy crops. The E+ RE+ pathway is an “all-renewables” scenario and also is the most technologically restrictive. It assumes no new nuclear plants would be built, disallows below-ground storage of carbon dioxide, and eliminates all fossil fuel use by 2050. It relies instead on massive and rapid deployment of wind and solar and greater production of hydrogen to meet carbon goals. The E+ RE- scenario, by comparison, relies on “limited renewables,” constraining the annual construction of wind turbines and solar power plants to be no faster than the fastest rates achieved by the country in the past, but removes other restrictions. This scenario depends more heavily on the expansion of power plants with carbon capture and nuclear power.
Wind and solar power, along with the electrification of buildings and cars, must grow rapidly this decade for the nation to be on a net-zero trajectory. The researchers said the 2020s must also be used to continue to develop technologies, such as those that capture carbon at natural gas or cement plants or those that split water to produce hydrogen, so that they are affordable to deploy at scale in the 2030s. But for the next several years, the researchers said most of the big investment revolves around clean electricity and electrification and is similar across all of the scenarios.
Big but affordable effort needed for America to reach net-zero emissions by 2050, Princeton study shows
The new “Net-Zero America” study maps out state-by-state, sector-by-sector, and decade-by-decade what it would take for the U.S. economy to be fully decarbonized, and provides a blueprint for action in the 2020s.
Discussions
Hmm, yet another big energy study finds that a future energy system that relies only on renewables is the most expensive kind!
This is a very detailed study, and used hourly dispatch data to determine the quantity of generation, transmission, and even MWatts of 6 hour batteries needed.
It is interesting to note that in the lower cost scenarios, not only do we keep nuclear power and gas w/CC&S, but we also keep oil! The reference scenario (not low carbon) even keeps coal. So they don't believe that renewables are becoming so cheap that displace all other energy sources.
Note that the authors of the report include decarbonization pioneers Pacala & Socolow, and Energy Collective contributor Jess Jenkins.
I did notice a few shortcomings in the Princeton report
Agree.. I have a few things I'd like to change as well. Hopefully, this is just Version 1.0 and they will update with new versions over the next decade.
As number from China show, nuclear can be cheaper than renewables in a country with the right environment.
Do you have numbers and/or a link for this?
I also wonder - If costs are good - why is China doing so little with nuclear?
Looking at PRIS data you can see that because of jump in construction starting around 2010, the four years (2015-2018) were pretty good as 23 new reactors were brought online - almost 6/year.
Since then, we have 2 in 2019, 2 so far in 2020, and 10 under construction. Assuming the projects under construction get completed in the next five years - this means that average for China, now and going forward till 2025 is 2 new reactors/year. In other words, average per year has dropped from 6 to 2.
If nuclear is cheap - why the slowdown? Plus, you are saying that is "in a country with the right environment".
Let's look at the China's generation numbers over the last five years - (2015-2019) As I said above, these were good years for new nuclear capacity in China. Because of that, nuclear generation doubled over the last five years. However, as you can see below, both Solar and Wind still had more additional generation vs nuclear. Solar grew by 5x.
Going forward we have new nuclear capacity being added at a much slower pace. Including the two units added in 2020 - nuclear capacity in China will grow from 45.3GW in 2019 to 58.3GW in 2025 - just over 28%. Generation should grow the same.
What about Solar is China - how is that doing?
China solar capacity growth hits 40 GW in 2020
China has brought about 40 gigawatts (GW) of new solar power into operation in 2020, taking its total installed solar capacity to 240 GW
Meaning total solar capacity grew by 20% in 2020.
China’s total solar capacity had increased more than fivefold since 2015 and could double in the next five years
A rapid decline in costs has also allowed projects to operate without subsidies.
Wang told an industry conference that China’s solar capacity growth was expected to reach an average of 70 GW a year during the 2021-2025 “five-year plan”, and could even be as high as 90 GW
So we have nuclear growing by 26% vs solar growing by 100%. Interesting, since that would imply that total solar generation in China for the year 2025 will be higher for solar vs nuclear.
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